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Harpy
In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, a harpy (plural harpies, Greek: ἅρπυια,Of uncertain etymology; R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 139).ἅρπυια. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project harpyia, pronounced hárpyi̯a; Latin: harpȳia) was a half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds, in Homeric poems.Homer. Odyssey, Book 20.66 & 77 Descriptions They were generally depicted as birds with the heads of maidens, faces pale with hunger and long claws on their hands. Roman and Byzantine writers detailed their ugliness.Virgil. Aeneid, Book 3.216; Tzetzes. ad Lycoph. 653; Ovid. Metamorphoses Book 7.4, Fasti, Book 6.132; Hyginus. Fabulae, 14 Pottery art depicting the harpies featured beautiful women with wings. Ovid described them as human-vultures.Ovid. Metamorphoses vii.4 Hesiod To Hesiod, they were imagined as fair-locked and winged maidens, who surpassed winds and birds in the rapidity of their flight. "...the Harpyiai (Harpies) of the lovely hair, Okypete (Ocypete) and Aello, and these two in the speed of their wings keep pace with the blowing winds, or birds in flight, as they soar and swoop, high aloft."''Hesiod, ''Theogony, 265–267. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Aeschylus But even as early as the time of Aeschylus, they are described as ugly creatures with wings, and later writers carry their notions of the harpies so far as to represent them as most disgusting monsters. The Pythian priestess of Apollo recounted the appearance of the harpies in the following lines: "Before this man an extraordinary band of women harpies slept, seated on thrones. No! Not women, but rather Gorgons I call them; and yet I cannot compare them to forms of Gorgons either. Once before I saw some creatures in a painting, carrying off the feast of Phineus; but these are wingless in appearance, black, altogether disgusting; they snore with repulsive breaths, they drip from their eyes hateful drops; their attire is not fit to bring either before the statues of the gods or into the homes of men. I have never seen the tribe that produced this company, nor the land that boasts of rearing this brood with impunity and does not grieve for its labor afterwards."Aeschylus. Eumenides, 50 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Virgil "Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they (Harpies) are; abominable their droppings, their hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable"''Virgil. ''Aeneid, Book 3.216 ''This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.' Hyginus ''"They are said to have been feathered, with cocks' heads, wings, and human arms, with great claws; breasts, bellies, and female parts human."Hyginus. Fabulae, 14 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Functions and abode The harpies seem originally to have been wind spirits (personifications of the destructive nature of wind). Their name means "snatchers" or "swift robbers"Adrian Room, Who's Who in Classical Mythology, p. 147 ISBN 0-517-22256-6 and they steal food from their victims while they are eating and carry evildoers (especially those who have killed their family) to the Erinyes. When a person suddenly disappeared from the earth, it was said that he had been carried off by the harpies.Homer Odyssey, Book 1.241, 14.371 Thus, they carried off the daughters of king Pandareus and gave them as servants to the Erinyes.Homer. Odyssey, Book 20.78 In this form they were agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus. They were vicious, cruel and violent. The harpies were called "the hounds of mighty Zeus" thus "ministers of the Thunderer (Zeus)".Valerius Flaccus. Argonautica Book 4.425 Later writers listed the harpies among the guardians of the underworld among other monstrosities including the Centaurs, Scylla, Briareus, Lernaean Hydra, Chimera, Gorgons and Geryon.Virgil. Aeneid 6.287 ff; Seneca. Hercules Furens 747 ff Their abode is either the islands called Strophades,Virgil. Aeneid, Book 3.210 a place at the entrance of Orcus,Virgil. Aeneid, Book 6.289 or a cave in Crete.Apollonius. Argonautica, Book 2.298 Names and family Hesiod calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra and sisters of Iris.6 Hyginus, however, cited a certain OzomeneHyginus. Fabulae 14 as the mother of the harpies but he also recounted that Electra was also the mother of these beings in the same source. This can be explained by the fact that Ozomene was another name for Electra. The harpies possibly were siblings of the river-god Hydaspes and Arke, as they were called sisters of Iris and children of Thaumas. According to Valerius, Typhoeus (Typhon) was said to be the father of these monsters13 while a different version by Servius told that the harpies were daughters of Pontus and Gaea or of Poseidon.Servius. ad Aeneid, Book 3.241 They are named Aello ("storm swift") and Ocypete ("the swift wing"),Hesiod. Theogony 265Pseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheca, Book 1.121-123. and Virgil added Celaeno ("the dark") as a third.Virgil, Aeneid 3.209 Homer knew of a harpy named Podarge ("fleet-foot").Homer, Iliad 16.148 Aello, is sometimes also spelled Aellopus or Nicothoe; Ocypete, sometimes also spelled Ocythoe or Ocypode. Homer called the harpy Podarge as the mother of the two horses (Balius and Xanthus) of Achilles sired by the West Wind ZephyrusHomer''. Iliad, Book 16.150;'' Quintus Smyrnaeus. Fall of Troy, Book 3.743 ff while according to Nonnus, Xanthus and Podarkes, horses of the Athenian king Erechtheus, were born to Aello and the North Wind Boreas.Nonnus. Dionysiaca Book 37.155 Other progeny of Podarge were Phlogeus and Harpagos, horses given by Hermes to the Dioscuri, who competed for the chariot-race in celebration of the funeral games of Pelias.Stesichorus. Fragments 178 The swift horse Arion was also said to begotten by loud-piping Zephyrus on a harpy (probably Podarge), as attested by Quintus Smyrnaeus.Quintus Smyrnaeus. Fall of Troy, Book 4.569 ff Mythology Argonauts The most celebrated story in which the harpies play a part is that of King Phineus of Thrace, who was given the gift of prophecy by Zeus. Angry that Phineus gave away the god's secret plan, Zeus punished him by blinding him and putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat because the harpies always arrived to steal the food out of his hands before he could satisfy his hunger. Later writers add that they either devoured the food themselves, or that they dirtied it by dropping upon it some stinking substance, so as to render it unfit to be eaten. This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. Phineus promised to instruct them respecting the course they had to take, if they would deliver him from the harpies. The Boreads, sons of Boreas, the North Wind, who also could fly, succeeded in driving off the harpies. According to an ancient oracle, the harpies were to perish by the hands of the Boreades, but the latter were to die if they could not overtake the harpies. The latter fled, but one fell into the river Tigris, which was hence called Harpys, and the other reached the Echinades, and as she never returned, the islands were called Strophades. But being worn out with fatigue, she fell down simultaneously with her pursuer; and, as they promised no further to molest Phineus, the two harpies were not deprived of their lives.Apollodorus. Bibliotheca, Book 1.9.21 According to others, the Boreades were on the point of killing the harpies, when Iris or Hermes appeared and commanded the conquerors to set them free, promising that Phineus would not be bothered by the harpies again. "The dogs of great Zeus" then returned to their "cave in Minoan Crete". Other accounts said that both the harpies as well as the Boreades died.Scholia. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 286, 297; Tzetzes. Chiliades, i. 217 Thankful for their help, Phineus told the Argonauts how to pass the Symplegades.Argonautica, book II; Ovid XIII, 710; Virgil III, 211, 245 Tzetzes explained the origin of the myth pertaining to Phineus, the harpies, and the Boreades in his account. In this late version of the myth it was said that Phineus, due to his old age, became blind, and he has two daughters named Eraseia and Harpyreia. These maidens lived a very libertine and lazy life, abandoning themselves to poverty and fatal famine. Then Zetes and Calais snatched them away somehow, and they disappeared from those places ever since. From this account all myths about them the harpies started, as was also retold by Apollonius in his own story of the Argonauts.Tzetzes. ad Lycophron, 166, Chiliades, 1.220; Palaephaust. 23. 3 Aeneid Aeneas encountered harpies on the Strophades as they repeatedly made off with the feast the Trojans were setting. Celaeno utters a prophecy: the Trojans will be so hungry they will eat their tables before they reach the end of their journey. The Trojans fled in fear. Modern reception Dante Harpies remained vivid in the Middle Ages. In Canto XIII of his Inferno, Dante Alighieri envisages the tortured wood infested with harpies, where the suicides have their punishment in the seventh ring of Hell: Here the repellent harpies make their nests, Who drove the Trojans from the Strophades With dire announcements of the coming woe. They have broad wings, with razor sharp talons and a human neck and face, Clawed feet and swollen, feathered bellies; they caw Their lamentations in the eerie trees.[http://new.bostonreview.net/BR18.1/dante.html Translation of Robert Pinsky, Boston Review] Archived 2014-11-04 at the Wayback Machine. William Blake was inspired by Dante's description in his pencil, ink and watercolour "The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides" (Tate Gallery, London). Linguistic use and application The harpy eagle is a real bird named after the mythological animal. The term is often used metaphorically to refer to a nasty or annoying woman. In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick spots the sharp-tongued Beatrice approaching and exclaims to the prince, Don Pedro, that he would do an assortment of arduous tasks for him "rather than hold three words conference with this harpy!" Heraldry In the Middle Ages, the harpy, often called the Jungfrauenadler[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed [citation needed]] or "maiden eagle" (although it may not have been modeled after the original harpy of Greek mythology), became a popular charge in heraldry, particularly in East Frisia, seen on, among others, the coats-of-arms of Rietberg, Liechtenstein, and the Cirksena. Gallery Mythology and Folklore Harpies.jpg|Harpies 800px-PERRIER-Francois-Aeneas-and-his-Companions-Fighting-the-Harpies.jpg|Aeneas battles the Harpies Harpies in the infernal wood, from Inferno XIII, by Gustave Doré, 1861.jpg|Harpies in the infernal wood, from Inferno XIII, by Gustave Doré, 1861 Video games ON-creature-Harpy_02.jpg|A Harpy from Elder Scrolls Online. Harpy in God of War II.jpg|A harpy in God of War II Harpy--screenshot.jpg Harpy (1).jpg Iron-clawed_harpy.jpg Harpy (1).png Total_War_Harpies_Render_1.jpg Dryad_HarpysPerch.png Water-Harpy-Ramira.png.pagespeed.ce.8_f-vNomqu.png -1857878515.jpg Harpy--screenshot (1).jpg 300px-Harpy_Wraith.png Harpy (3).png Screenshot_-_Harpy.jpg download - 2020-02-16T161237.411.jpg Films 271e5a72bea485e3fc885b9491b46f06.jpg hqdefault - 2019-09-05T212326.455.jpg NarniaHarpyWerebat.jpg 1000px-NarniaHarpyWerebatFlying.jpg Jasonandtheargonauts-harpy.jpg Animations Harpy.gif|Harpy in American Dragon: Jake Long. Harpy (Tara Duncan).png|Harpy in Tara Duncan. 20190703_151616.png Harpy.jpg Masonthetrex 424.JPG Last-Unicorn-Harpy.gif da6946j-d35b8ff2-e81d-46de-b551-753f3e0fedec.png download - 2019-09-05T190022.026.jpg images - 2019-09-05T211011.551.jpg images - 2019-09-05T211042.069.jpg tumblr_mdjdpmuym21rc4tdro1_500.jpg SS_S3_1 (1).png Duckt22.jpg DrTTK9pWsAA3kua (1).jpg סטימפליה.jpg harpy (2).png Comics images (4).jpg|Ella, a harpy in Percy Jackson 20191003_130906.jpg|A Harpy on the cover of X-factor comic #221. endless_realms_bestiary___harpy_by_jocarra_d7sv0rb-fullview.jpg OTHERS MasonMDaythetrex 1183.JPG MasonMDaythetrex 1037.JPG References Category:Antagonists Category:Greek mythology Category:Roman mythology Category:Graeco-Egyptian mythology Category:Medieval mythology Category:Mythical creatures Category:Mythological monsters Category:Birds in mythology Category:Hybrid Category:Flying things Category:Humanoids Category:Harpies Category:Women in Greek mythology